Beijing Windstorm: Workers Swing Wildly on CCTV Tower Amid High Winds

Unexpected windstorms in Beijing made a regular cleaning task terrifying. Crew members hung to their wires far above the city as the strong gusts caused the CCTV headquarters to wobble.

Online videos from the event show the workers swaying violently hundreds of meters above the earth on their ropes. They fought to keep their balance as the wind blasted across Beijing.

Standing 234 metres tall with a 473,000 square metre footprint, the CCTV Tower is a well-known sight. The horrific ordeal came to a welcome conclusion when local media later revealed that the workers had been successfully freed.

Shanghai Daily reported on X, “On Thursday, high-altitude maintenance workers were observed swinging in the strong winds outside the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing’s Central Business District.” Wishing they would be safe.

The China Central Television Tower is situated in the Chaoyang District, the heart of Beijing.

Multiple warnings were issued by the National Weather Service as thunderstorms and strong winds struck the city. There was little rain to go along with the gusts, and the city was still on red alert because of the extreme heat. Beijing was not alone in this weather catastrophe; a heat wave was affecting many regions of the Northern Hemisphere; temperatures in nearby New Delhi were above 45 degrees.

Extreme weather conditions struck China all during 2023. The 20 million people that live in Beijing were roasted by a heatwave that set a record. Tens of thousands of people had to flee and more than a million houses were left without electricity after severe flooding devastated southern China only a few weeks ago. The southern floods caused landslides in Guangdong province, which is home to more than 125 million people and borders the semi-autonomous territories of Hong Kong and Macau.